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You just knew that when the Red Hot Chili Peppers came back with their first album in six years that everything about it had to be massive. When Unlimited Love comes out on April 1st, it’ll mark the return of both guitarist John Frusciante and producer Rick Rubin, after both being away from the band for over a decade. Their accompanying album tour (in stadiums, of course) kicks off in June will feature an insane list of supporting acts in Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, ASAP Rocky, Beck, Haim, King Princess, St. Vincent, The Strokes, and Thundercat. Now, their new single “Poster Child” sees the band at their absolute funkiest.

Flea’s bass groove runs a parallel wavelength alongside Frusciante’s guitar licks as Anthony Kiedis is his usual tongue-twisting self, singing “I thought I won the lottery, the numbers never thought of me. Ramones had a lobotomy, so spin me like a pottery.” The song brims with an oceanic breeze, ready for a drop top ride down the Pacific Coast Highway. It follows the previously released lead single “Black Summer” and comes along with a trippy animated video that the band debuted on their Facebook page.

Listen to “Poster Child” above.

Unlimited Love is out 4/1 via Warner. Pre-order it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Former co-host of The View turned Daily Mail columnist Meghan McCain began trending on social media this week as people rushed to roast the conservative commentator for a questionable remark. Yes, again. This time, it was regarding a tweet in which McCain took issue with a report from The Hill that the White House is considering sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Poland as a show of solidarity during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to a source, “The vice president has a smaller footprint and is historically more nimble.”

McCain, who has repeatedly criticized Harris in the past, was not a fan of the move. “Please for the love of God, send a serious person instead,” McCain tweeted.

McCain’s attack on Harris did not go over well on Twitter, where she was still trending on Friday afternoon as people questioned McCain’s political experience… as well as fitting in a few jabs about her wild hairstyles during her last season on The View.

It also didn’t take long for people to start pointing out the GOP elephant in the room. Namely, that her father, John McCain, chose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate in 2008, and well, Palin has never exactly been known for keen intellect. Not to mention the fact that she had been the governor of Alaska for barely two years and actually quit before her term was over.

So, you know, glass houses, throwing stones, etc.

(Via Meghan McCain on Twitter)

Thank goodness because FX’s Atlanta is finally on the brink of returning after a four-year hiatus. That means that we’ll soon see Donald Glover’s brainchild bring its unique brand of surreal back to the small screen. The fourth season’s trailer gets intense, given that the core four — Earn (Donald Glover), Darius (LaKeith Stanfield), and Van (Zazie Beetz) — are maneuvering through unfriendly surroundings during a European tour. This has included some real-life mirroring with the cast experiencing racial profiling while abroad, although that’s something that they took in stride.

Hopefully, we’ll see Nutella sandwich man appear out of the blue, but the question on a lot of people’s minds is this: Why did the show have such a long break after Season 2 debuted on March 1, 2018?

It’s easy to chalk much of the delay up to the pandemic, and yep, that’s definitely something that slowed down production for nearly every show out there, but one must recall that we were still waiting on Season 3 arrival news back in January 2020. That’s when FX chief John Landgraf revealed that we’d see two more seasons of the show, and at the time, the plan was for 18 episodes to arrive with Season 3.

As for why it took nearly two years for that update, well, one can only chalk that up to Donald Glover being so in-demand, given his Star Wars detour and, of course, his musical career. Likewise, Lakeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz, and Brian Tyree Henry have all been keeping quite busy as well, and it’s just damn hard to get in-demand stars in one place for an extended period of time. Yet they did it, and soon enough, we’ll reap those benefits.

Atlanta returns on March 24. Whew!

Uproxx takes a look at some great travel ideas that’ll connect for the whole family this spring.

Band Of Horses are having a big year so far. They’ve unveiled Things Are Great today, their first album in six years that was announced in October and had been penned almost entirely before the pandemic even began. After being delayed from January to March due to vinyl factory issues that have been affecting lots of indie bands, the record is finally out now with plenty of acclaim. The lead single that came with the initial announcement last fall was the hopeful, jangly “Crutch,” and last night they brought it to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to celebrate the unveiling of Things Are Great.

Previously, Ben Bridwell said that the song “[started] with something from my real life. Obviously ‘Crutch’ means some of the things that I was dependent on. My relationship for one. I think I wanted to say, ‘I’ve got a crush on you,’ and I thought it was funny how relationships also feel like crutches. I feel like everybody has had a time when nothing goes right and you still have to carry on. I think that feeling hits you in this song even if you don’t know what the specifics are.”

Watch their performance of “Crutch” above.

The world of American soccer broadcasting delivered some big news earlier this week when Turner Sports and the U.S. Soccer Federation announced a partnership to bring USMNT and USWNT games to the network. According to a release, the agreement “will make TNT/TBS and HBO Max the exclusive English-language home to more than 20 Women’s and Men’s National Team matches each year” starting in 2023.

It’s not Turner’s first foray into footy — the broadcaster previously was home to the Champions League — but this is an opportunity for them to showcase the teams ahead of a number of huge international tournaments. And to celebrate, the network’s most prominent group of sports broadcasters, the Inside the NBA guys, were all given jerseys during Thursday night’s slate of games.

Charles Barkley, in particular, was excited to get his hands on a U.S. Soccer jersey, although it comes with a catch: he wants everyone to understand this is a USWNT shirt with his name on it.

“I just wanna make this perfectly clear: this is a women’s jersey,” Barkley said. “Cause the American men team sucks. They do, they do. Shout out to the women for finally getting equal pay. So, I’m glad to be wearing this female jersey, cause the men suck. The men gotta do better, man. The men gotta do better. We’re the United States of America, we should not be bad at any sport.”

The American women are, of course, the most decorated team in the sport, winning four World Cups and producing a number of the best players to ever step on the pitch — as of this writing, the women are the top team in the world per FIFA’s rankings. As for the men, while they are a decent side, they certainly are not as dominant on the world stage as the women. The team infamously missed the World Cup in 2018, and while they are currently ranked 13th in the world by FIFA, they have yet to secure a spot in the 2022 World Cup.

The good news for the men is that it’s more likely they make it than they don’t, as they currently sit in second place in CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying and should be able to secure at least fourth place and a spot in an inter-confederation playoff game against a team from Oceania that they’d be favored to beat. The bad news is that, uh, well, it was more likely than not that they’d make it enter the final qualifying window in 2018, too, and weird things can happen in those sorts of environments. And besides, even if they do make it to the World Cup, it seems like they still have a long way to go before they earn Barkley’s respect.

(Via Insider)

If the coming vibe shift brings us into a period where indie sleaze rules supreme, Charli XCX stands to take the throne at the top of the pops, finally. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect from someone who cites their formative influences as Britney Spears and the Ed Banger Records, with a special nod to French singer/rapper/D.J. Uffie. Her penchant for classic ’00s pop star costumes and living life in the club was never the aesthetic with which Millennials, with their sober curious lives and plant parent memes, could get down. It seems like she was made for the days when bands’ fans discovered their new favorite artist on Makeoutclub, and parties only got started at 2 a.m.

Charli has long invited people into her world when they click, choosing left-of-center personalities and women the pop industrial complex doesn’t seem to know what to do with. There’s one constant in Charli’s career, however: collaborations. Specifically with women, many of whom could be classified as difficult, unlikable, or simply subversive of the male gaze. 

Those collaborations started from a place of “girl power” inspired feminism. Her first major hit came courtesy of a feature on Icona Pop’s 2012 interpretation of her song, “I Love It.” It was a hit on the internet, which meant something totally different then, that got a lift in 2013 when Girls featured the song in a debaucherous club scene. Charli would later say she didn’t even know what she meant by the lyrics to the song, which, everyone knows, is the hallmark of a great Euro-pop dance hit. And that she didn’t feel as if it were hers because she was excluded from the promotion and touring around the single when it took off. 

Her profile only grew when “Fancy,” a co-write in which she wrote and sang the hook alongside Iggy Azalea, became 2014’s song of the summer. The track was criticized as another feminist anthem and a homage to materialism and white women’s bougieness. This doubleheader set her up to reach pop stardom, but she opted to venture down a path of subversiveness that kept her authentically grounded in producing the kind of music she wanted to make. Now, on the precipice of releasing her final album with Atlantic Records, Charli faces criticism for singles that her fans deem too mainstream. One of which, “Beg for You,” is a collaboration with Rina Sawayma.  Charli told EW the song is an “interpolation” of the kind of song a pop star would make with a major label — specifically a song recorded by Swedish pop singer September (whose real name is Petra Maryland) from 2007. Besides being a fascinating piece of Swedish pop production from a bygone pop era, the song was a meme on Twitter in 2018 — bringing it back into the internet and perhaps to Charli’s attention.

But circa 2014, Charli was going through something of an identity crisis. Her 2013 album, True Romance, was critically lauded but commercially under-performed. On 2014’s Sucker, Charli seemed to reach for mainstream pop stardom, landing only one charting song: the sappy but enjoyable “Boom Clap.” “The music I’ve been writing recently, it’s definitely some of the most pop stuff I’ve ever written,” Charli told the LA Times in a 2014 interview. “But it’s not coming from a totally innocent, naive mind. It’s coming from someone who’s very aware.” The awareness she references is to her place in the music industry.

From the 2016 Vroom Vroom EP on, Charli began associating with producers from the PC Music Collective and building up a stable of women she collaborated with. There is a clear trend among the singers: pop’s eccentrics, many of whom also eschewed making obvious hits to explore their creative paths. 2017’s Pop 2 opens with a track featuring Carly Rae Jepsen, whose 2012 phenomenon “Call Me Maybe” and pivot away from pop princess stardom echoes Charli’s search for musical authenticity. There are songs with Caroline Polachek, the former Chairlift singer who shed her indie-pop roots to explore a PC Music pop-art path of her own. Sky Ferreira, another artist who was pushed towards a traditional approach and opted to make her own kind of music, shows up. Charli’s admiration for all things Scandinavian comes through in collaborations with Tove Lo, ALMA, and MØ. Christine And The Queens (aka Héloïse Adélaïde Letissier) appears more than a few times; an artist who has a huge European audience but is too complicated for the top of the pops. Rita Ora, Brooke Candy, Kim Petras, and CupcakKe are also repeat collaborators and artists classified as difficult women; they’re frequently the targets of internet hate, misconceptions, and all the insults usually hurled at ambitious women. And that’s only to name a few.

Under the auspices of her label, Vroom Vroom Records, the first artist Charli signed was CuckooLander, the project of her touring bassist. In 2019, she signed Nasty Cherry, an all-girl band she put together and created a Netflix series around. “My vision is that they become the biggest band in the world, a band I would have wanted to listen to and have been inspired by when I was 15,” Charli told Rolling Stone. 

That’s not even to mention two of Charli’s most prolific partnerships. One was with SOPHIE, the PC Music producer whose influence loomed large on Charli’s work until she died in 2021. “There are very few artists who make me feel something up my core and make me wanna cry,” Charli told Vogue in 2019. “Justice and Uffie made me feel something when I was 14, and I didn’t really have that feeling again until I met SOPHIE. I felt this rush of: F*ck, this is the coolest sh*t I have ever heard.” The other is with Noonie Boo, a Swedish songwriter and producer who has co-written numerous songs with Charli, among multiple other left-of-center (and a few front and center) pop acts. “There are a lot of songwriters out there who, even though they’re extremely talented, they are sometimes very keen on pushing their own agenda,” Charli said in a 2020 interview with Red Bull. “[…] I’ve definitely been in rooms where I experimented with new songwriters, and I can’t get a word in edgewise. You know how much I talk, and that’s really hard for me […] Noonie is somebody who is so supportive of the artist’s vision.”

Their collaboration brings us to the Crash era, Charli’s latest — Boa co-wrote the single “New Shapes,” which features Christine And The Queens and Caroline Polachek. Like many songs Charli has teased from the album, it is about sex — inspired by her long-term relationship — and steps away from the futuristic, challenging pop of her past in favor of embracing something more easily digestible.

Charli’s ultimate pop era seems to maximize everything: her exploration of art, her profile, and the profiles of the women around her, which was probably her endgame all along. 

Crash is out 3/18 via Atlantic. Pre-order it here.

Charli XCX is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Yesterday was Camila Cabello’s 25th birthday and she really made it count. She kicked things off by revealing the release date of her upcoming album Familia (out April 8), and later, she released her new Ed Sheeran collaboration “Bam Bam.” Also yesterday, she gave the song its television debut with a Late Late Show performance.

She also sat down for an interview on the program and said of the meaning of the song, “It’s something that my mom has always said to me. […] The song is about the cycles of falling in love, falling out of love; life has its ups and downs. You gotta roll with the punches, you gotta keep dancing.” She also noted of working with Sheeran on it, “It was great. I’ve been such a huge fan of Ed’s for such a long time and it was such a full-circle moment, getting to be in the studio [with him].

Meanwhile, Nathan Lane, the episode’s other guest alongside Cabello, is starring with Megan Thee Stallion and others in the upcoming movie F*cking Identical Twins. He described the film by taking a dig at Sam Elliott, who recently expressed dissatisfaction with Power Of The Dog and its “allusions of homosexuality.” Lane said, “It’s the gayest movie ever made. Sam Elliott could never see this film. If Power Of The Dog upset him, this would kill him. It’s a satirical, absurdist, R-rated queer musical based on The Parent Trap.”

Watch Cabello’s “Bam Bam” performance and other Late Late Show clips above and below.

Familia is out 4/8 via Epic. Pre-order it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

New documentary footage shared with The Washington Post has given insight into the chaos surrounding the Jan. 6th insurrection and one of the main Trump advisors/supporters who had a pivotal role in it.

Roger Stone, a longtime ally of the former president and a political lobbyist with ties to Nixon, invited a documentary crew to film him over the course of two years — a time period that overlapped with the Stop the Steal campaign and the riots on Capitol Hill. Stone, who was instrumental in getting Trump elected and who’s already been the subject of one documentary, secretly advised the president during his final days in office, drafting up something he called the “Stone Plan” that would ensure blanket presidential pardons for Trump’s closest allies before President Joe Biden took office. Stone — who was scheduled to attend the president’s rally early on Jan. 6th but backed out at the last minute after VIP accommodations couldn’t be met — wanted Trump to issue pardons for a number of associates including members of Congress like Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz, his friends in the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers movements, Capitol Hill insurrectionists, and imprisoned mobsters.

According to The Post, Stone’s pardon plan was ultimately thwarted by White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

“Clearly, Cipollone f—ed everybody,” Stone told another friend in prison in footage reviewed by the paper. In a text message he wrote later that same day, Stone told another Trump supporter, “See you in prison.”

Though Stone denied any involvement in the Jan. 6th insurrection, he attended a rally the night before urging protestors to prepare for a fight, and his game plan to instill doubt in the 2020 Presidential Election results was the foundation for Trump’s Stop The Steal campaign. Despite all of that, Trump refused to issue pardons to his friend and instead, chose to pardon Steve Bannon — something filmmakers said enraged Stone and prompted him to publicly threaten both Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“In two weeks he’s moving to Miami,” Stone was caught ranting while hooked up to a mic for the documentary. He was referring to Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s planned move to Florida after the election was certified. “He’s going to get a beating. He needs to have a beating. And needs to be told, ‘This time we’re just beating you. Next time we’re killing you.’ ” When an associate realized Stone was still being recorded he urged him to say he was just joking to which Stone replied, “No, no, it isn’t joking. Not joking. It’s not a joke.”

Later Stone would turn on Trump himself, raging about how he’d betrayed his friends and disgraced the movement saying Trump was, “the greatest single mistake in American history.” He then referenced the ongoing federal investigation in New York.

“A good, long sentence in prison will give him a chance to think about it, because the Southern District is coming for him, and he did nothing,” Stone said.

And, despite issuing public support for another Trump presidential campaign a few months later, on Inauguration Day Stone laughed at the idea his old friend could win again. “Run again! You’ll get your f—ing brains beat in,” he said.

(Via The Washington Post)

In a miraculous combination of fasting acting and medical know-how, three nurses rushed to the rescue in a rather unlikely place.

A 42-year-old business coach, Sharell Weeams, was swaying and spinning on the dance floor, when her heart suddenly stopped. A wave of blackness rushed over her and she collapsed. Her partner caught her just before she hit the floor.

Cedars Sinai labels these as common symptoms of cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest is closely linked with a heart attack. However, they are not the same. A heart attack is a circulatory problem blocking blood flow and oxygen. Symptoms start slow and persist for hours or even weeks. And yet, the heart does continue to beat.

Cardiac arrest, however, indicates an electrical malfunction triggered by a disruption to the rhythm of a heartbeat. And, most important of all, it can cause death within minutes. This is what made Williams’ situation incredibly dire.

Luckily, Weeams had three guardian angels that night—three fellow dancers, who happened to be registered nurses.

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Allie Herrera, Nickie Taylor and Natasha Veal immediately went to work. Detecting no pulse from Weeams, they began CPR. Though the actual dancing might have been interrupted, there was definitely some intricate choreography going on, as each woman quickly took on specific roles.

Taylor told NBCDFW “Allie’s like, Nickie, start CPR. And I was like starting chest compressions. And that’s when I kind of went out of dance mode into my ER nurse mode,” Taylor explained.

Veal added, “And she was like, who’s gonna breathe for her and I was like I am,” describing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

The team effort was a success. After performing CPR and using an AED, their efforts ensured that Weeams survived. And now she is using her second chance at life to educate others about heart health.

See on Instagram

Weeam’s shared how she aims to help others learn from her mistakes. “I’m open with people and say, like, look, I messed up, you know, I missed some of the signs that I should have listened to, I should have gone to the doctor sooner, I didn’t always prescribe, you know, refill my prescription, you know, fast enough,” she said, regarding getting off her medication for high cholesterol too early.

She also added that several of her family members suffered from heart attacks, and even her father passed away after going into cardiac arrest—at age 42, the same age Williams is now, no less. While this is important information to note, it isn’t necessarily a death sentence, and could be mitigated by positive lifestyle choices. According to a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine, even those at high genetic risk of heart disease can lower their risk of a cardiac event by nearly half (46%) by adhering to at least three of the four components of a healthy lifestyle: which include no smoking, avoiding obesity, regular physical activity and sticking to a healthy diet.

For all of February, Weeams has filled her Instagram with educational information about heart health, inspiring others to find better ways to take care of themselves.

Her posts are simple and bite-sized, like the infographic below that shows easy ways of going from sedentary to active.

See on Instagram

“During the pandemic, I was sedentary, you know, I sat on my butt for a good year without doing any form of exercise. And that’s where I really feel like things kind of accelerated. So I’m really talking to people about all of the mistakes and things that I made so that hopefully they don’t have to make it,” Weeams reflected.

#relatable

As for the life-saving nurses—they continue to incorporate a passion for dance into their medical pursuits, and even formed a group called Swing Saves Lives, which hosts fundraising events for life-saving medical equipment.

This is certainly one of those times when something life-threatening becomes life-changing in the most positive way.